After Danny Escobedo’s release from prison, hundreds of inmates began suits for their freedom on the grounds that their rights had been violated, too. Each case was heard on its merits, and in numerous instances people who had been convicted of serious offenses were freed because of the new standards established in the Escobedo case. After getting out, Danny was not a paragon of virtue, according to the police. He led a nomadic existence, drifting from job to job, and was arrested frequently. With asperity, and a few choice epithets, Danny referred to police harassment. Although the Escobedo case was a controversial one, most agree that it inspired better police training, better law enforcement procedures, and improved scientific crime detection.

Lawyer Kroll persevered in his defense of Danny Escobedo. The case was argued before the Supreme Court, and in 1964, in a landmark decision, the Court reversed Danny’s conviction. Legal aid, said the judges, must be instantly available to a suspect. “A system of law enforcement that comes to depend on the confession,” one Justice declared, “will, in the long run, be less reliable than a system that depends on extrinsic evidence independently secured through skillful investigation.” A Justice who declaimed against the decision said, however, “I think the rule is ill-conceived and that it seriously fetters perfectly legitimate methods of criminal enforcement.”

Barry Kroll, a Chicago lawyer, took an interest in Danny Escobedo’s case. Kroll felt that his client’s rights under the Constitution had been abrogated. Since the alleged accomplice, Escobedo, had been denied access to an attorney, Kroll asked the courts to invalidate the conviction. He proposed that lawyers be entitled to sit in when the police question a suspect but the Illinois courts rejected that on the grounds that it would effectively preclude all questioning by legal authorities. If such a law were upheld, the police felt that it would play havoc with all criminal investigations.

In 1960, a young Chicagoan, Danny Escobedo, was given a 20-year jail sentence for first-degree murder. Danny had confessed to complicity in the killing of his brother-in-law after the police had refused to allow him to see his lawyer. Actually, Danny was tricked into blaming a friend for the liquidation of his sister’s husband, thereby establishing himself as an accomplice. Despite the fact that Danny later recanted his confession, he was found culpable and jailed. Danny had been stereotyped as a hoodlum and nobody raised an eyebrow over the hapless felon’s troubles.

Some months later Dorie Miller was serving on an aircraft carrier when Admiral Chester Nimitz, the Commander of the Pacific Fleet, came aboard to preside over a special awards ceremony. In stentorian tones the Admiral presented Miller with the prestigious Navy Cross, commending him for a singular act of valor and “disregard for his own personal safety.” Miller’s heroism helped to shatter the bias against African-Americans in the armed forces. Although he could have accepted a sinecure at a U.S. naval base, Dorie chose to remain in the combat zone where he was killed in action in December, 1943.

Men all around Miller were succumbing to the lethal spray of Japanese bullets. He dragged his captain to safety and turned back to see that the machine-gunner had been killed. Dorie took the big gun and trained it on the incoming bombers. Within the space of ten minutes he was credited with destroying four bombers while dodging the bullets of their fighter escorts. The enemy scurried away, having struck the incisive blow that precipitated U.S. entrance into World War II. Amidst the dead bodies and the ruined fleet were the heroes such as Dorie Miller. The Navy had told him that he did not have to fight but he hadn’t listened. The Navy had attempted to stereotype him, but Dorie changed all that.

The coffee cups suddenly went spinning as an explosion knocked Dorie Miller flat on his back. Jumping up from his supine position, the powerfully built messman from Waco, Texas, headed for the deck. Everywhere that Dorie looked he saw smoke and mammoth warships lying on their sides. Overhead dozens of Japanese dive bombers controlled the skies without a U.S. plane to repulse their attack. The havoc was enormous. Without hesitating, Dorie joined a team that was feeding ammunition to a machine gunner who was making an ineffectual attempt to protect their battleship from being razed by the torpedo planes.